Jake's Thing
''Jake's Thing'' is a satirical novel written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1978 by Hutchinson Plot summary The novel follows the life of Jacques 'Jake' Richardson, a 59-year-old Oxford don who struggles to overcome the loss of his libido. Reception In the magazine '' Prospect'', critic Andrew Marr discussed his expectation that Amis' work would be retrospectively beyond the pale. "What slightly spoils this diatribe, however, is that to prepare for it I went back to Kingsley Amis’s novels and enjoyed myself more than was convenient for my purposes. ''Jake’s Thing'', for instance, famously rancid with misogyny, turns out, on re-reading, to be surprisingly tender in parts, and intensely moving on the humiliations of impotence. ''The Old Devils'' will last as long as novels do; but it is not the only brilliant treatment of old age-''Ending Up'' is one of the most delicately tragic funny books I have ever read. And so on." Writing in The Millions ''The Millions'' is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as ''Lucky Jim'' (1954), ''One Fat Englishman'' (1963), ''Ending Up'' (1974), ''Jake's Thing'' (1978) and ''The Old Devils'' (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of the novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, ''The Times'' ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Life and career Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London, and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). The Amis grandparents were wealthy. Wil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hutchinson (publisher)
Hutchinson was a British publishing firm which operated from 1887 until 1985, when it underwent several mergers. It is currently an imprint which is ultimately owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate. History Hutchinson began as Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., an English book publisher, founded in London in 1887 by Sir George Hutchinson and later run by his son, Walter Hutchinson (1887–1950). Hutchinson's published books and magazines such as '' The Lady's Realm'', ''Adventure-story Magazine'', ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and ''Woman''.Ashley, M. (2006). ''The Age of Storytellers. British Popular Fiction Magazines 1880–1950''. London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press. In the 1920s, Walter Hutchinson published many of the "spook stories" of E. F. Benson in ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and then in collections in a number of books. The company also first published Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novels, five novels by mystery writer Harry Step ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prospect (magazine)
''Prospect'' is a monthly British general-interest magazine, specialising in politics, economics and current affairs. Topics covered include British and other European, and US politics, social issues, art, literature, cinema, science, the media, history, philosophy and psychology. ''Prospect'' features a mixture of lengthy analytic articles, first-person reportage, one-page columns and shorter items. The magazine was launched in October 1995 by David Goodhart, then a senior correspondent for the ''Financial Times'' ''(FT)'', and chairman Derek Coombs. Goodhart came up with the idea of producing an essay-based monthly general-interest magazine—a form at that time unknown in Britain—while covering German reunification as Bonn correspondent for the ''FT''. Some prominent intellectuals have featured in Prospect in the last few years, including economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, writers such as Lionel Shriver, Clive James, Toni Morrison and Margaret At ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Marr
Andrew William Stevenson Marr (born 31 July 1959) is a British journalist and broadcaster. Beginning his career as a political commentator, he subsequently edited ''The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 1998 and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 to 2005. In 2002, Marr took over as host of BBC Radio 4's long-running ''Start the Week'' Monday morning discussion programme. He began hosting a political programme—''Sunday AM'', later called ''The Andrew Marr Show''—on Sunday mornings on BBC One in September 2005. In 2007, he presented ''Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain'', a BBC Two documentary series on the political history of post-war Britain, which was followed by a prequel in 2009, ''Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain'', focusing on the period between 1901 and 1945. In September 2012, Marr began presenting ''Andrew Marr's History of the World'', a series examining the history of human civilisation. Following a stroke in January 2013, Marr was i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Millions
''The Millions'' is an online literary magazine created by C. Max Magee in 2003. It contains articles about literary topics and book reviews. ''The Millions'' has several regular contributors as well as frequent guest appearances by literary notables, including Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Elif Batuman, Aimee Bender, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Michael Cunningham, Charles D'Ambrosio, Helen DeWitt, Junot Diaz, Emma Donoghue, Geoff Dyer, Jennifer Egan, Deborah Eisenberg, Nathan Englander, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joshua Ferris, Charles Finch, Jonathan Safran Foer, Rivka Galchen, William H. Gass, Keith Gessen, Dana Goodyear, Lauren Groff, Garth Risk Hallberg, Chad Harbach, Hari Kunzru, Jonathan Lethem, Philip Levine, Sam Lipsyte, Fiona Maazel, Ben Marcus, Colum McCann, Elizabeth McCracken, Rick Moody, Sigrid Nunez, Meghan O'Rourke, Susan Orlean, Alex Ross, Marco Roth, George Saunders, David Shields, Lionel Shriver, Zadie Smith, Lorin Stein, and Wells Tower. The name was chosen as a play o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1978 British Novels
Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary (also known as Stephen of Hungary Crown) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II. * January 10 – Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a critic of the Nicaraguan government, is assassinated; riots erupt against Somoza's government. * January 18 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the British government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. * January 22 – Ethiopia declares the ambassador of West Germany '' persona non grata''. * January 24 ** Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. ** Rose Dugdale and Eddie Gallagher become the first convi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novels By Kingsley Amis
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novels Set In Oxford
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |